The Fancy (16 page)

“Mum, I don’t want so many potatoes. Do take some back.”

“I don’t know why you’re suddenly so down on potatoes, especially with the papers telling you you should eat them, though I could have told them that years ago. There’s nothing to touch a potato for nourishment, I always say.”

“I can’t digest so many, and for another thing, they’re fattening.”

Mrs. Ferguson gave an exclamation and threw down her knife and fork. “I thought so! It drives me to despair when I hear that sort of talk. Apart from your health, which you might ruin for good and all, men don’t like these scraggy girls, now do they, Leonard?”

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“Of course not. And there’s Kitty,” looking at her plump and dimpled daughter across the table, “nothing but skin and bone already and talking about dieting! Well, I despair.” She sought solace in roast mutton, sitting slightly back from the table to allow clearance. Her size was more than middle-aged spread, but it was not glandular or unhealthy, it was not symptomatic of anything but food. Kitty mouthed silently at Len : “Tell her now,” and her father, seeing it, raised his eyebrows enquiringly. Kitty nodded and smiled at him reassuringly. Len was just opening his mouth to speak, when Mrs. Ferguson said :

“I tell you one thing, my darling. You’re not going to work tomorrow unless the fog’s cleared, is she, Len?” As Len never contradicted her, it was quite safe to make these kindly appeals to his opinion. She was very fond of Len.

“But I must go, Mother. You get a pink slip in with your clock card now when you stay out, to say you’re helping Hitler. It makes you feel awful.”

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. b don’t see that it’ll help Hitler very much for you to save your life instead of risking your neck in this death trap as you did tonight. Who’s for a little more meat? Pass your plate, Charlie ; I gave you a very small helping.”

“Not for me, Alice,” he said. “I’ll have a bit of cheese presently, perhaps, if we’ve got any.”

“Of course we’ve got cheese, but just have a slice more meat first. You really should, you know, as you went without your lunch.”

“No, really, dear. I’ve had quite enough.”

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like it? Is it too underdone for you? Look, let me cut you a slice and just pop it under the grill. It won’t take a second.”

He kept his temper, because he had no temper to lose. He refused her offer politely, still smiling.

“Well, a spoonful more vegetables then,” she said reaching over to heap them on to his plate. He began obediently to eat, without taste or distaste. She had made him gastric anyway in the first ten years of their marriage.

Kitty’s stomach, being young, had merely been stretched by the constant overloading. She passed her plate for more without being asked. She gave Len a dig while her mother was carving and mouthed again.

Leonard swallowed what he was eating, pushed back his hair, cleared his throat and said : “Did Kitty tell you, I put in for a medical for the Air Force this afternoon?”

“Of course I didn’t, silly,” said Kitty, cutting in on her mother’s ejaculation, “I haven’t had a chance. But it’s true, Mother, he really wants to go, and we thought perhaps it would be better not to wait but to get married quick before he goes.” She got it all out in a rush. “What do you think, Dad?” she asked, seeing that his face was more favourable than her mother’s.

“You know what I think, Katie,” he said in his kind deep voice that lifted his moustache up and down like C. Aubrey Smith. “Ask anyone who was through the last war. Take your happiness while you can, they’ll tell you. And as for Len’s going in the Air Force——”

“As to that,” broke in Mrs. Ferguson with the carving knife poised, “I thought he was in a reserved job.”

“Yes, but Mother, he wants to go,” said Kitty sharply, wishing that her own first instinctive remark hadn’t been that about being reserved.
In the moment’s shock of his announcement in the bathroom, she had seen all sorts of pictures : Len killed, Len wounded, crippled for life, perhaps, Len being torpedoed in a troopship. The remark which she now was ashamed of her mother for making had been jerked out ot Kitty like a growl from a tigress defending its young. Since then, the visions in the bathroom were being replaced by other pictures : Len in uniform, herself going proudly to the post office to draw her allowance, stamped as a service wife by the brooch he had given her, Len a hero—there was even a quick shot of Buckingham Palace and herself being photographed holding a baby with a medal on its matinée coat.

She was well ahead of everybody else and could take up the cudgels with conviction : “You ought to be proud that he wants to fight,” she said. “I am. You didn’t make any objection to Gerry going, though he was your son and Len’s only your son-in-law, and not that yet.”

“Childie, childie, d to kiss her goodnight, ’ blyhon’t take me up so,” chided her mother. “I never said I had any objection. Though if I had, Gerry has nothing to do with it, because he was in the Army already in peace-time. It’s his career. What about Len’s career? That’s the only thing I’m worried about. It’s natural for a mother, I suppose, to want to see her daughter safely provided for.”

“Well now, as to that, Alice,” said her husband, “you know we can always help them if the worst came to the worst. I haven’t touched my money yet, and I shan’t till I’m satisfied my children won’t want it.” He got up. “I’ll just take my plate out of the kitchen, dear, and get the cheese.”

“What do you think young legs are for? Kitty, dear, run and get the chesee for your father.” But he was out of the door before she could get up ; it was a ruse to get rid of his plate before his wife could see how much he had left on it.

“And so you see,” Kitty was saying when he came back. “I shall go on living here, and when Len comes on leave, we can have the spare room—if that’s all right with you.”

“Fancy asking such a thing of your own mother!” beamed Mrs. Ferguson. “Oh, not that bit of cheese, Charlie. That’s last week’s I’m keeping for cooking. Kitty, run and get this week’s cheese ; it’s hanging under the shelf in a damp cloth. And get my chocolate ration out of the dresser drawer while you’re there. No, not you, Len. Kitty likes to go. Funny scrap,” she said, looking after her. “Fancy asking me if I minded your having the spare room! As if I wouldn’t give her the roof off my head, if she asked for it. I might have the spare room done up. It needs new curtains anyway, and I’ve still got all my coupons, though Kitty’ll have to have some for her trousseau. I’ll make that room really nice, and I want you to feel that this is your home whenever you can come.” She laid a podgy, hardworking hand on his arm. “Perhaps I can give you the home your mother never gave you.”

He bit his lip and looked down at his plate, trying to edge his arm away imperceptibly.

“Well, what d’you think of the idea?” asked Kitty, coming back and banging the door behind her.

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t do it,” said her mother, unwrapping her chocolate, “provided they do take Len in the Air Force. Dad and I will have to talk it over, of course, but you know we only want what’s best for your happiness.” She broke off two squares of chocolate and gave one each to Kitty and Len, in supreme token of her benevolence.

The more she thought about it, the better she liked the idea of this marriage. Her mind’s eye visualised the spare room, seeing it with a new eiderdown and curtains hanging from a gathered pelmet. She would get her mother’s wardrobe out of store, where she had been keeping it until Kitty had her own home. The room was quite big enough to take it. Yes, and it would be big enough to have a baby in, too ; they could always have a gas ring fitted in there for boiling kettles.

Len was silent. Things were going well, but in the wrong direction. He had anticipated opposition, but this was almost worse. The main thing was for Kitty to be happy, and she certainly looked it now, arguing with her mother about the length of her wedding dress. But the high spirits which had made him indulge his amateurish whistle as he walked to the recruiting office at lunchtime had long since evaporated. The existing prospect of freedom from the factoryI believe youan along which for so many years had confined him in its noise and smells and arguments was giving place to a regret for its familiarity. He had never realised before how many friends he had there. Regarded honestly, would the Air Force mean more than the same work that he had been doing for years, but with less responsibility, more discipline and discomfort and less pay? His Leaves he could see only too clearly, unless he could manage to save up enough sometimes to take Kitty to a hotel.

Two days before Kitty’s wedding, the other girls on her bench came back early from lunch, spilled all the pipes out of her tray and festooned them with streamers and ribbons. They hung a naked celluloid doll on one induction pipe and an old shoe on the other, and on her light, shaking with mirth at their own humour, they hung a placard saying : “All right tomorrow night.”

When Kitty came back from lunch, everyone was looking at her as she approached the display, giggling and crimson, and finally let out a hoot as she saw the placard and hid her face in her hands, shaking her hair from side to side.

People were staring and calling out from all over the Shop. A man on the cylinder section was standing up to see better at one end of a rig that cradled a cylinder block.

“What’s up?” asked his mate, who had come in late, tugging at his overall.

“They’re razzing one of the girls on the bench. Got her pipes all tied up with ribbons and things.”

“Let’s look. He climbed up on the other end of the rig. “What’s the idea?”

“She’s going to be married.”

“Oh, is that all?” The man who had come in late climbed down again, swinging the rig so that his mate fell off and impaled his shin on a stud.

Edward had difficulty in getting the girls to settle down to work. They were fooling about excitably and had begun flicking rubber piston rings about, which was good fun, but liable to put somebody’s eye out. Kitty was still in helpless paroxysms and unlikely to be good for any work for some time. That could be overlooked, since she was getting married on Friday, but Edward trotted round the bench trying to round up the others into some semblance of order before Mr. Gurley should shoot up his little window.

“A joke’s a joke,” he pleaded, “but you must shut up now and get down to work. …”

“My little Eddie!” crooned Dinah, hanging round his neck and leaving lipstick on his cheek. She had been drinking beer instead of eating at lunchtime. She could drink it like a man, opening her lovely throat and tipping in the beer like pouring swill down a sink. She dived under the bench, crawled to the other side, bit Reenie in the leg and came up filthy.

“Dinah, your
hair
!” said Grace in horror. She herself had one special day a fortnight for washing her hair ; it came between the day for polishing the furniture and her husband’s black day, which was stove-cleaning day, when not even a cup of tea could be brewed. Thinking how she herself would feel if she got her hair unexpectedly dirty and had to upset her whole routine by washing it, she was horrified for Dinah.

Edward wiped the lipstick off his cheek and left a smear of oil instead. He liked a joke as much as anybody, but Bob Condor was bearing down on his toes from the far end of the shop.

“Shut up!” said Edward, knocking on the bench with a mallet, “and get cracking!” He loved the girls the bad smell in the Redundant Stores aaf to be in high spirits, but he also loved to think that they paid some attention to what he said. Whenever they came to him for advice, trustingly submitting a part for his ultimatum and either scrapping or retaining it on his word without a murmur, his heart glowed. He loved it when they couldn’t turn a nut or get a gear off a shaft, and he could do it for them. If he failed, he could always take the part into the fitting shop, get one of the fitters to do it and come back as if he had done it himself. It made him smile when he thought of his first fear of them. Of course,
he still made mistakes, but then to err was human, as he frequently told Wendy Holt when she made one of her muddles with the rockers. It was natural that she should make mistakes. She could never be mechanically minded like Freda, for example. Bearing in mind that this was the most difficult work for a girl so feminine and fragile as Wendy, Edward spoon-fed her and protected her from the ravenings of the A.I.D., who, if they pounced on Dinah, would get answered back, but if they pounced on Wendy, usually reduced her to tears.

“Why haven’t your girls started work?” asked Bob Condor, his eyebrows where his hair would have been if his hair had not started so far back.

“Just a bit of fun,” said Edward. “After all, it’s not every day——”

“What d’you think this is—a nursery school? Nice thing if someone were to come round the factory and see this going on. No wonder your bench gets so many black marks, Ledward, if you let them fool about like this.” He picked up a pipe with a blue bow on one end, tore off the ribbon and ground it under-foot.

“That’s unfair,” said Edward, incensed. “We’ve had fewer black marks than the other bench this month.” He was sure of this because it was written on his heart every time the name and crime of one of his girls was entered in the A.I.D.’s black book. Kitty was feverishly tearing the trimmings off her pipes, and hiding the oddments in her tool box. The placard was lying on the bench and Edward quickly turned it upside down.